How to Start a Microblading Business in Mississippi

Who regulates microblading in Mississippi

Microblading is regulated by the Mississippi State Department of Health, through its Professional Licensure division, under sections 73-61-1 and 73-61-3 of the Code and the department's rules at Title 15, Part 19, Subpart 60, Chapter 11, the same chapter that registers tattoo and body piercing artists. The statute's definition does the classifying: tattooing means making indelible marks or designs on or visible through the skin by puncturing or pricking the skin with a needle or other instrument and inserting ink or other pigments. A hand tool drawing pigment strokes into the brow is inside that sentence on every element.

The Board of Cosmetology and Barbering is the regulator that does not govern this work, and the boundary runs both ways. Its licenses authorize the services in the cosmetology chapter, and tattooing is not among them; its establishment application asks salons whether they will offer tattooing precisely because tattooing is a service it does not regulate. The only exemption in the tattoo statute is for licensed physicians in their professional duties. Everything else about a microblading business belongs to the general agencies: the Secretary of State for the entity, the Department of Revenue for taxes, the Department of Employment Security if it hires, and the city for its own permits.

Mississippi microblading at a glance

The certificate of registration, step by step

Registration runs through the Department of Health's Professional Licensure division, and the department's rules structure it as a two tier apprenticeship system. The entry tier is the Provisional Certificate of Registration. To hold it, the applicant must be over 18 years of age, must work under the direct on site supervision of a Regular certificate holder for a minimum of nine months at a registered establishment, and must have completed the American Red Cross Preventing Disease Transmission course or a similar course the department accepts. The Regular Certificate is the full credential above it. The department's registration packet prices the application at $150 per registration, $150 for each tattoo registration and $150 for each body piercing registration, and the statute caps the annual registration fee at $150, uniform for all registrants.

Two features of the system shape how a brow business is built. The first is the supervision economics: a new artist cannot open alone on day one, because the provisional period requires a Regular certificate holder physically supervising at a registered establishment for at least nine months. New Mississippi brow artists therefore start inside someone else's registered studio, and studios with a Regular artist hold a genuinely scarce asset, the ability to train. The second is the calendar. Registrations run on a fixed June 1 to May 31 year rather than an anniversary cycle, renewal requires the renewal form and that the establishment pass a department inspection, and the department's renewal form prices late renewal steeply: a renewal postmarked after May 31 owes the renewal fee and a $200 reinstatement fee. Holders of both tattoo and body piercing registrations renew them together for $250 total.

The enforcement edge is criminal, which separates Mississippi from most of this series. Section 73-61-1 makes tattooing for compensation without first registering, or after a registration has lapsed, a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of $100 to $500, and makes tattooing a person under 18 unlawful outright. For an artist arriving from a cosmetology background, the practical translation is that the esthetician certificate on the wall authorizes facials and tinting and says nothing about the needle: the certificate the brow work needs is the health department's, displayed in a conspicuous location as the rules require.

The establishment position: a named facility

Mississippi registers the facility through the artist rather than licensing it separately. Section 73-61-1 requires the facility or premises where tattooing will be performed to be specified in the registration, and authorizes the registered person to tattoo only in the specified facility. The certificate of registration issued under the department's rules names both the person and the establishment, is displayed conspicuously, and at renewal the establishment must pass a department inspection. There is no separate establishment fee in the department's published schedule as read for this guide; the $150 registration is the facility's state price as well as the artist's, renewed annually on the June 1 to May 31 year.

The common mixed case is a brow studio inside a salon or suite. The salon keeps its Board of Cosmetology and Barbering establishment license for its licensed work, and discloses tattooing on its application among the services the board does not regulate. The artist holds the Department of Health registration naming that facility. Neither document substitutes for the other, and the arrangement most likely to fail an inspection is a registered artist working at an address the registration does not name, because the statute ties the authority to tattoo to the specified facility. An artist who splits the week between two studios should settle with the department, before booking, how each facility is covered.

Forming your business entity

Most Mississippi microblading studios form as a limited liability company with the Secretary of State, and the state's fee schedule makes the arithmetic simple. The Certificate of Formation, Form F0100 on the schedule, costs $50. Mississippi charges no franchise tax on a domestic LLC, and the LLC annual report, Form F0108, is priced at $0. The report is still a real filing with a real deadline, due April 15 every year and fileable online any time on or after January 1, and letting it lapse costs the entity its good standing, with reinstatement priced at $50.

The same fee schedule prices the variations an owner might meet. Registering a foreign LLC, one formed in another state, costs $250, and its annual report costs $250 every year, which is the entire reason a Mississippi studio forms in Mississippi. Reserving a name before filing costs $25. A sole proprietor skips the certificate and the annual report entirely, at the price of holding the business's liabilities personally; for a business whose work carries a misdemeanor for paperwork failures, the entity layer is worth forming properly and early.

Business names: the voluntary fictitious name registration

Mississippi's trade name system is the most relaxed in this series, because the filing most states require is one Mississippi merely offers. The Fictitious Business Name Registration Act, sections 75-93-1 and following, created a voluntary, centralized registry at the Secretary of State so the public can find the legal name behind a business name. Registration is not required, no penalty attaches to operating unregistered, and registering grants no exclusive right to the name. The Secretary of State's fee schedule prices the registration, Form F0070, at $25, and the registration runs for a five year term, renewable for another $25 due by December 31 of the fifth anniversary year. There is no county level filing to pair with it.

Voluntary does not mean useless. A studio trading under a name different from its legal name will meet the question at the bank, at the payment processor and on the lease, and the $25 registration is the cleanest public answer to who stands behind the sign. An LLC trading under its exact filed name needs nothing at all. One name caution is specific to this trade: the name on the Department of Health registration should match the business the client is booking, because the certificate names the establishment and is displayed to the client.

Federal tax ID and business banking

Apply for an Employer Identification Number on IRS.gov. It is free, it issues online in one session, and any site charging for an EIN is selling a form you can file yourself. The EIN is the key that opens the registrations that follow: the Department of Revenue's TAP account if the studio sells retail, the unemployment insurance employer account when you hire, and the business bank account all key off the federal number paired with the Secretary of State's entity records.

Open the business bank account as soon as the entity and the EIN exist, and run every fee, product order, rent payment and payroll deposit through it. A microblading studio's calendar has two hard dates from two different agencies, the April 15 annual report and the May 31 registration expiration, and clean separate books are what make both survivable. The account also draws the line that matters if an artist's classification is ever questioned: the studio's money and the room renters' money should never share a ledger.

Sales tax in Mississippi: services are not taxed, retail is

Mississippi's sales tax is a tax with a list, and tattooing is not on it, which makes Mississippi the mirror image of its neighbor in this series: Arkansas taxes tattooing by name, Mississippi does not. Section 27-65-23 taxes the gross income of the business activities the legislature enumerated, air conditioning work, vehicle repair, car washing, hotels and motels, laundering and dry cleaning, plumbing, pest control, renting personal property and other named trades, and neither tattooing nor any other beauty service appears. A microblading appointment, a permanent makeup session and a touch up therefore carry no sales tax.

The register still needs the tax if the desk sells things. Aftercare ointments, cleansers and retail products are sales of tangible personal property, taxable at the 7 percent state rate, with any local taxes the Department of Revenue publishes for the studio's address applied on top. Register the business with the Department of Revenue through TAP, the Taxpayer Access Point, and hold the sales tax account and permit before the first retail sale; the Department advises applying at the earliest convenience because the permit process can take up to three weeks. A studio that sells nothing retail has no sales tax account to open. Set the point of sale to itemize services and products on separate lines from day one.

Room rent and worker classification

Microblading artists commonly rent a room inside a salon, a suite building or a med spa style studio, and Mississippi's facility specific registration is the term the rental has to satisfy. The room the artist works in must be the facility specified in her registration, the certificate naming her and the establishment must be displayed there, and the establishment must be able to pass the department's inspection at renewal. A room that cannot be inspected, or an address that differs from the registration, is not a paperwork detail in this trade; the statute authorizes tattooing only in the specified facility. Landlords renting to body artists should expect the registration and inspection cycle to appear in the lease conversation early.

Classification follows control, exactly as it does for licensed trades. No Mississippi statute fixes the tax treatment of a rental arrangement, so the question is answered by the relationship itself. A renter who sets her own prices, hours and client list, collects her own money and carries her own supplies reads as an independent business renting space. An artist whose schedule, prices, products and clients the host business controls reads as an employee whatever the agreement calls her, with withholding and unemployment insurance following that reading.

Hiring employees in Mississippi

The first hire registers the studio as a Mississippi employer on two tracks. For unemployment insurance, the studio completes a Status Report, Form UI-1, with the Mississippi Department of Employment Security, online or through a local tax field representative. A commercial employer becomes liable on paying $1,500 in wages in a calendar quarter, or when a worker performs services in some portion of a day in each of 20 different calendar weeks in a year. The Department's published schedule for new employers runs 1.0 percent for the first year of liability, 1.1 percent for the second and 1.2 percent for the third and following years until the employer qualifies for a modified rate, which can run from 0.2 to 5.4 percent, on the first $14,000 of wages per employee per calendar year. Reports are quarterly, due April 30, July 31, October 31 and January 31. For income tax, the studio registers with the Department of Revenue, through TAP, to withhold Mississippi tax from wages, collecting Form 89-350, the state withholding exemption certificate, from each employee; the Department's withholding formula for 2026 applies the state's flat 4 percent rate to taxable income above $10,000.

The wage floor is federal, because Mississippi has not enacted a state minimum wage law. The U.S. Department of Labor's state minimum wage table lists Mississippi with no state law, so the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour under the Fair Labor Standards Act is the floor for covered employers, federal overtime at one and one half times the regular rate applies past 40 hours in a workweek, and state law bars cities and counties from setting a higher local wage of their own. One hiring rule is specific to this trade: a provisional artist on staff must work under the direct on site supervision of a Regular certificate holder, so the supervision roster is a staffing requirement, not a preference. Workers compensation coverage belongs on the same first hire checklist, arranged before the first employee's first shift.

Local rules for a Mississippi microblading studio

The state registration does not finish the opening. A studio inside a city such as Jackson, Gulfport, Hattiesburg or Tupelo should expect a city business or privilege license on top of the state stack, at fees and on forms the city itself sets; the massage board's business registration elsewhere in Mississippi law expressly requires the registrant's city or county business permit number, which shows how standard that local document is. The Department of Health's inspection is the state's own visit, tied to renewal, and it does not replace the city's building and fire inspections for the space.

Zoning sits underneath the licensing, and body art draws more zoning attention than any other trade in this cluster. The registration is issued for the facility it names, relocating means amending the state file as well as the lease, and none of that answers whether a tattoo establishment may operate at the address at all: the city or county zoning for the specific parcel does, and some localities treat body art as a special use. Make the zoning call before the lease is signed, and before the registration application names the address.

Insurance for a Mississippi microblading studio

No Mississippi statute or rule, as read for this guide, conditions the certificate of registration on an insurance filing, so the insurance stack is set by risk and by contract rather than by the department. The risk case needs no exaggeration: the work breaks skin, works in pigment near the eyes, and sits in the one beauty trade Mississippi criminalizes when unregistered, which tells a studio how seriously the state takes the file. Professional liability written for permanent makeup and body art is the core policy, and a studio supervising provisional artists should confirm the policy contemplates supervised apprentice work.

General liability for the premises and property coverage for machines, beds, build out and retail stock complete the standard stack. Landlords, and suite landlords in particular, routinely write their own limits and additional insured requirements into the lease, and those contract numbers are the figures to satisfy. Mississippi names no required limit for a tattoo establishment, so treat any figure quoted as a state requirement as a sales line.

Your Mississippi renewal calendar

Official sources

• Mississippi State Department of Health: Professional Licensure, tattoo and body piercing registration, forms and renewals
• Mississippi Code section 73-61-1: tattooing defined, registration required, the $150 fee cap and the misdemeanor
• Mississippi Code section 73-61-3: body piercing registration on the same structure
• Secretary of State: Business Documents Filing Fees schedule, the $50 Certificate of Formation, the free annual report and the $25 fictitious name registration
• Department of Revenue: the 7 percent sales tax, sales tax permits and employer withholding
• Taxpayer Access Point (TAP): register for a sales tax account and permit, file and pay
• Mississippi Department of Employment Security: employer FAQs, Form UI-1 registration, new employer rates and the $14,000 wage base

Mississippi microblading FAQ